No. 4 Bulldogs Wind Down Spring Team Racing

Apr 09, 2010

Last Team Racing Regatta Until Nationals Qualifier This
Weekend at MIT

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – After a strong
third-place showing at last weekend’s Southern New England
Team Race Intersectional, the Bulldogs are shipping up to Boston to
compete in the 29th Marchiando and 50th Friis Trophies at MIT and
Tufts. Yale is also travelling to Roger Williams for Team
Racing A Level and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy for the New London
Invitational.

The Friis-Marchiando Trophies will bring the top team racers in
the country together on two of the nation’s trickiest venues,
the Charles River and Mystic Lake. Both bodies of water can
serve up radical windshifts that are baffling to the point of
maddening. Yale will report to Tufts on Saturday morning.
Last year, the Bulldogs proved themselves up to the challenge with
an impressive third-place finish. Sailing for the Bulldogs
will be seniors Thomas Barrows, Sarah Lihan and Marla Menninger,
juniors Blair Belling and Liz Brim, sophomore Joseph Morris and
freshman Raphael Fernandez. Tufts is unique in the sailing
community for its Lark dinghy. The craft is a hybrid of the
420 and the FJ, blending the 420’s speed with the FJ’s
maneuverability. This year Tufts has thrown a new wrinkle
into the mix for teams: larger sails. Larks were already
known as overpowered boats, and the increase in sail area has made
the boat nothing short of a monster in the collegiate sailing
world. Yale’s women had the opportunity to test out the
new sails two weeks ago at the Duplin team race, and found the
additional power to be exciting, though at times
overwhelming. Lihan and Brim were members of the Duplin team,
and may be able to help the team transition to the new sail
cut.

A second pack of sailors will travel to Roger Williams on Sunday
for team racing. Yale will face off against sailors from
Boston College, Dartmouth, Roger Williams, Tufts and the University
of Rhode Island. Racing for the Bulldogs will be
seniors Rebecca Jackson and John Vrolyk, junior Andrew Kurzrok,
sophomore Isabel Elliman and freshmen Senem Cilingiroglu and Grace
Zimmerly. Like for the Friis gang, the Roger Williams team
race represents the final team-racing event of the spring
season.

Lastly, sailors will race in the New London Invitational,
Southern Series Four at Coast Guard. The regatta will be sailed in
both 420s and FJs and promises to test the sailors' aptitudes for
changing boats and their ability to handle extremely dynamic
sailing conditions.

Teams should expect gusty conditions with a low forecast to pass
over New England this weekend. However, none of the
Bulldogs’ venues are on open ocean, so local effects may
predominate despite strong macro-scale systems.